Daughters of the House of Rittevon
by Sera dy Relandrant
Summary: What if Dunevon was born a girl? "We share the same blood, Saraiyu. I, Dovasary, Rózčiane, you yourself... treachery is in your blood as it is in mine. Do not for a moment believe that you will escape your curse."
1. Prologue

_45__7 H.E_

She glides down the glimmering corridors of the Royal Palace of Rajmuat, a slim, imperious white wraith accompanied by a trailing retinue of ladies-in-waiting, the loveliest and most high-born daughters of the luarin nobility. Lustrous waves of hair the hue of overripe wheat frame her delicate, high-boned face. Her lips are a slash of crimson in her porcelain-white skin and her eyes bright and hard like the sapphires of the Tyran coast. She is every bit the daughter of the Royal House of Rittevon she was born in, though Duchess of Jimajen now. She is the Princess Royal of the Copper Isles, lying in seven-fold glory, a pearl borne on the sparkling waves of the Azure Sea. She is Lady Imajane the Graceful; let no man trifle with her.

She sweeps through the Queen's chambers. Shafts of light from the thick wax tapers, poised in their candelabrums of solid gold, dance off the tiny mirrors threaded into the walls, lavished with broidered tapestries, forming a jeweled lattice. The Queen's private apartments do honor to her beauty, to the wealth of her lord's fertile island kingdom, a wealth wrought from the sweat and blood, the tears and mother's milk of an enslaved race.

Impatiently, the princess pushes back the cherry-colored silk draperies that hang over the ivory doorframe of the queen's bedchamber and strides with the confidence of one who knows that she shall not be refused, through it. The Queen's taste is that of a young girl, and a young girl she really is, not yet seventeen. The massive room bears testimony to her sweetly – if extravagant – pastoral taste. Rosy-cheeked shepherdesses beam down from oval frames of varnished mahogany, on the black-and-white brocade wall studded with pink pearl, while bowls of Yamani porcelain bear the sensuous flowers of the isles on dainty ivory side-tables.

Queen Éliane sits on one of the silken-draped couches scattered around the room, a bundle in frothing ivory silk in her arms. Her nightgown, of finest printed Yamani silk, clings to her voluptuous figure, occasionally ruffled by the ghost of a breeze that creeps in from one of the opened casements. Her ladies rise, her maids kneel when Princess Imajane arrive and startled, Queen Éliane looks up with the luminous forest-brown doelike eyes that had enamored King Oron a scant year before, driven him to the heights of love-frenzy and made her Queen when she was only fifteen.

Imajane stops in the middle of the room and drops a brief curtsy, her white skirts fanning around her, a sneer of distaste on her face. It humiliates her to make her obeisance to this maiden so many years younger than her and of far baser blood. But in the court of Rajmuat, etiquette demands that a princess bow to a queen. And etiquette is the only thing that can guarantee one even a modicum of security – to preserve one's soul, one must first preserve the proprieties. A scorned Queen, one with King Oron's favor still, though scarcely a fortnight out of childbirth, is a force to be reckoned with.

"Rózčiane," Éliane murmurs, shifting her hold on her daughter, on the child princess. "Rózčiane, my sweet princess, meet your sister."

She speaks for all the world as though the twelve-day-old infant can understand her words, and perhaps she can. Perhaps, Imajane ponders, the stench of Rajmuat politics makes one age more quickly than one normally would. And let no man underestimate the power of the Rittevon blood that crafts statesman out of the princes and princesses of the Copper Isles before they are out of the nursery. For a flash she feels pity for the infant whose parents she despises, the infant whom she had prayed would be miscarried in its mother's womb. To be a princess in Rajmuat is not easy – Imajane knows, and cannot help but sympathize with the child, the female who will never pose any threat to her for the sheer fact that she is female and thus, will never inherit the Kyprin throne.

"A beautiful child," Imajane murmurs courteously after a glance at the unmarked, unlined babe's face. "One can only hope that she will one day attain her fair mother's beauty, even though she will never attain her mother's station." _Your child will never rise above the rank of a Princess of the Blood, _her malicious face tells Éliane. _No royal house will wish to take a daughter of the House of Rittevon as a bride. She will never be a Queen. _

"She may have brothers," Éliane says coldly. "His Majesty has only one son yet."

_And Hazarin is barren. _"Rittevon Queens do not last long," Imajane murmurs, her long lashes veiling her ice-blue eyes. _My mother did not last over two years after my birth. You shall not last even one. _

"A whiff of the stench of treason is enough to call for examples to be made at the Harbor Mouth," Éliane hisses dangerously, with the tactlessness to be expected from a sixteen-year-old. "Though you were born His Majesty's daughter, do not for an instant forget that you, My Lady Duchess, are a woman and therefore disposable."

"How can I forget the curse of my birth?" Imajane says quietly. "To be born female… ah that is indeed to be born disposable." And she cannot help but smile at Éliane, at the indescribably beautiful and foolish girl.

Five months later, Éliane's, late Queen of the Copper Isles, severed head is brought on a gold platter to the Lapis Pavilion and presented before King Oron. "Whore," he spits and turns away. Another queen, another woman executed at the whim of a mad king. Imajane lingers in the shadows, behind slim pillars of black jade, and smiles as the platter with the head is carried away. In her arms is little Princess Rózčiane, Rózčiane who shall never be protected by a mother or loved by a father. It reminds Imajane of herself and as she holds the silken bundle in her arms she sighs and runs a slender, white finger over the baby's blissfully asleep face. Pity and sympathy warm the coldness of her heart and somewhere deep down softness blooms in that hard pit in her chest for the motherless child, so like her.

_461 H.E _

Elsren Balitang is presented to the Court at the age of four. An early age perhaps for a child, but then of course Duke Mequen's heir is no ordinary child. Rittevon blood burns in his veins and the whole court knows that this pretty child, his eyes the same oddly amber hue as his mother Winnamine Fonfala's, will one day be king. He is after all third in line to the throne. His eldest sister, Lady Saraiyu, makes her debut at court that summer and is crowned the Queen of Beauty at the Grand Joust of Beltane. Imajane marks her father's lusty eye on the vain half-raka slut and wonders vaguely whether the girl will be warming the royal bed anytime in the future.

_Highly likely, _she thinks disdainfully, _the raka are not particularly known for their strong sense of morals. Loathsome creature – if I were Queen I'd have her sold in the market as a common slave. Thinks she's a noble, does she? I'd show her she's nothing more than the most ragged copper wench that prowls the Honeypot at night in search of customers! _Anger shimmers because she will never be Queen, because the half-breed will one day sully the blood of some noble luarin house and bred hybrids with copper-ivory skin like hers. But she is a princess born and her cool façade never wavers for a moment and of all the young maidens at court, she is by far the sweetest to Lady Saraiyu.

Little Elsren wandering down the flowery boulevards of the Royal gardens with his formidable great-aunt, Lady Nuritin and her friend, Lady Ankoret. He chances one day upon the littlest Rittevon Princess. Rózčiane has but time to smile shyly at Elsren before Imajane sweeps in with her most favored ladies, Edunata and Tyananne. She sees the two young cousins, such a pretty picture, their childish beauty shining through the heaviness of the courtly attire they are swathed in – Elsren, brown-haired like a son of the Balitangs and amber-eyed like the Fonfalas, in no way a Rittevon princeling but comely to look at, Rózčiane, blue-eyed like her sister, but with the glossy, streaming black curls of her mother, a vision in lace – and for a moment she forgets to acknowledge the elderly noblewomen's presence.

"My Ladies," she murmurs apologetically, her slim, bejeweled hands playing upon her gown of rose tissue and cloth-of-silver, when she marks their disapproval at her discourtesy._ Sticklers for propriety._ "A thousand apologies for my lapse."

But a plan sweeps through her cunning, manipulative mind and later lying in bed, in Rubinyan's arms she whispers of the power a regent and his lady would have over a child king, twice royal – first through blood, second through marriage to a child queen. "A brilliant idea," Rubinyan murmurs, in between caresses. "But you forget to consider Mequen and Winnamine… as young Elsren's parents, the regency would naturally fall to them…"

"Hazarin has infinite faith in your powers. As king I am sure he would not hesitate to name _you _Lord Protector in the time of Elsren's minority – after all you are more fitted to the title than one as weak as that father of half-raka daughters." _Weak. _A man must surely be weak to fall to the sorceress's charms of a raka maiden. What was Sarugani of Temaida? A pretty face and a cunning mind – the daughter of a raka baron she'd managed to snag a royal luarin duke for herself. _That_ was called cunning. Imajane wished she had it in her.

"But you may be sure that the noble Winnamine will attempt to interfere in her son's affairs. Close contact with those halfbreed stepdaughters of hers has made her as self-important and interfering a hag as Genore Tomang. She has forgotten her place as a woman."

"She will not prove immune to a poisoned cup of mead," Imajane laughs lightly, the sound like the tinkling of glasses of white wine against eachother. "Or a chance stab from some wild, jungle raka attendant. Or, should circumstances fall as such, to high treason. The King's mother to be made an Example by the Harbor Mouth… doesn't that appeal to your sense of drama, darling?"

"You are your father's daughter, my love," he whispers, "One can only hope that your sister will follow your example." He does not say 'daughter' because both he – and she – know that she is barren. It does not matter, Rubinyan has other heirs – and some of those heirs have heirs of their own now – and Imajane loathes children. Rózčiane is an exception.

_462 H.E_

Imajane and Rubinyan follow the affairs of the Balitangs with interest. When the Balitangs are exiled, it is Rubinyan who buys Bronau's loyalty with a fortune embezzled from the Royal Treasury and commands him to trail them to Lombyn Island. And it is Bronau who woos the lovely, dim-witted Lady Saraiyu and lets the family think that he's hiding from court, in fear of his brother. After the initial week or two, there are few who believe his tales – Bronau is as foolish as the noble maiden he courts, he is a warrior and not a courtier. He is unable to sustain his lies behind a serene façade; he falters and makes mistakes – mistakes which the thin, nearly bald new slave girl at Tanair is able to perceive with ease.

The slave girl believes that it is the young ladies, Saraiyu and Dovasary, on whom the royal disfavor is tilted, that Rubinyan wishes for purposes of his own – she, with the arrogance of youth, assumes that she is able to perceive those purposes – to keep a closer eye on the daughters who bear the royal blood of Haiming and Rittevon. She is content to devote her energies to watching them, protecting them – Bronau's careful eye on little Elsren completely escapes her notice. It is Elsren whom Bronau woos, as summer whiles away, with sweetmeats and honeyed flattery as assiduously as he does the boy's half-sister with trinkets and melodious words of love. Soon the child, destined to be king, falls half in love with 'Uncle Bronau'.

"You're so beautiful with the children," Saraiyu coos to him during their improvised picnics on the rocky, sparse highlands, and nobody – from Winnamine, termed the Wise, to Dovasary the Sharp – is suspicious because Bronau has always been beautiful with children.

"He's a good man," Mequen says dismissively to the slave girl, after spending an evening watching Bronau teach Elsren chess – a task requiring almost a superhuman amount of patience. "I simply can't believe your words, Aly."

And then the blow falls. Oron bequeaths his throne to his only son in a deathbed confession and even before the coronation occurs, Rubinyan is able to convince Hazarin to recall the Balitangs – his successors – from exile. Imajane's private letter to her brother-in-law, though, damns Mequen and one day, whilst out riding Bronau stabs Mequen with a poisoned dagger. The murderer is painfully obvious but on Lombyn, there is no justice to be found. Saraiyu slaps Bronau screaming, "If I were a man!" tears trickling down her dusky cheeks, but even she is not foolish enough to do anything more. They bury the duke in Dimari, by a common inn and for the first time in years, Dovasary weeps. Bronau deems it advisable to retreat from the Balitang party and hire another ship back to Rajmuat. It is as well – Saraiyu spends the night after the burial sharpening her sword, a hard, brittle light in her light that even Aly is wary of.

"What happened to Uncle Bronau?" Elsren asks, wide-eyed, innocent, as the ship sets sail from the emerald-threaded, lush Lombyn, over churning, briny ocean waves.

"He killed your father," Saraiyu hisses before Winnamine can rehearse the consoling lie she's memorized for the sake of the children. "He is your enemy from now, Duke Elsren Balitang."

_Duke. Heir Apparent. Prince of the Blood,_ Aly thinks and looks with pity at the little boy. Then wryly, _I'm sure this is going to be a very long winter. _

Rubinyan is no fool and egged on by his lady, he does not waver from the macabre fate she has decreed for her enemies. An assassin, deft with a bow, takes out the Dowager Duchess, Lady Winnamine as she sweeps down the gangplank of Rajmuat. Her lifeblood seeps down the front of her black mourning gown, staining it even darker, as she gasps her last few breaths a few feet from her two young children – six-year-old Petranne, five-year-old Elsren.

Hours later, Lady Nuritin, her brittle mask slipping away, her ice-chipped words and callousness belying her towering temper and heartache, sweeps down the Teak Sitting Room of Balitang House. "You will keep your heads down. You will say nothing that might be misinterpreted as mistrust of any member of the royal family. You will enact the role of two demure young noblewomen, wallowing in sorrow, meek, humble, and foolish. Unless you wish to be made Examples by the Harbor Mouth you will heed my words," she hisses to her elder, weeping grand-nieces.

Her eyes are as pitiless and hard as the slabs of black granite that border the formal flower settings outside, by the pool, as she finally sits down next to them and adds, _"I will have vengeance." _And they listen because adversity makes even the rash wary and fools grow as wise they can under her harsh reign. The old year fades away in a bristling winter and storms that drive all indoors and Lady Saraiyu watches it descend in the magnificent crimson bloodbath of the firmament, swearing retribution.

_463 H.E. _

His Majesty, King Hazarin II, dotes upon his youngest sister. Princess Rózčiane is a sunny-tempered child, all satiny dimpled cheeks, gurgling laughter and sweet little smiles. Precocious too. This small woman-child of the Rittevons, her innate woman's instinct or perhaps the Rittevon blood guiding her, knows, even at five, that it is in her best interests for Uncle Hazarin – he is more her uncle than her brother – to dote upon her. The happier he is with her the more toys, pretty clothes and diverting attendants and companions are lavished upon her – this she cannot fail to notice.

In the elder princess's crystal-and-sapphire boudoirs, in her formal parlors bedecked in the royal colors of the House of Rittevon, virgin-white and deep copper, Imajane whispers in her little ears and teaches her the art of statecraft before she is old enough to know what the word means.

"You must please Uncle Hazarin," she murmurs, plaiting Rózčiane's long glossy black curls and weaving a diamond circlet over the braids, like a loving sister. "You must make him love you as he has loved no other child – and you must love Elsren Balitang too."

"But why?" Rózčia pouts because sometimes she's more of a child than a princess, and that for a daughter of Rittevon blood can prove to be perilous. Imajane knows from experience – her siblings, Veranine, Hanoren, Gordaina, Kaltain, where are they now? For some reason unknown to herself she wants to safeguard this pretty, innocent child sitting so contentedly on her lap from an untimely fate – from a watery grave or a blood-drenched coffin. "I don't like Elsren," Rózčia continues, "He laughs when me and Petra play dolls."

"_I _and Lady Petranne," Imajane corrects her absently. "Always use their full titles, my dear, lest you wish to cause offense. And you must be very, very good to Elsren because one day he shall be King. Uncle Hazarin will have no sons, Rózčia, but you shall be Elsren's Queen someday. Queen Rózčiane Rittevon Balitang, sovereign lady of the Copper Isles, a Daughter of the Blood Royal – doesn't it sound well?"

"No," Rózčia announces decidedly. "It sounds too long."

"The longer your titles extend, the better," Imajane says darkly knowing that she can never aspire to anything beyond Princess Royal and Duchess Jimajen by right of marriage.

It is Rózčiane who, with many sweet pouts and pretty insistences, draws her brother away from wine and to healthier foods and diversions. "You have to teach me to ride, because you're the best!" she insists, flattering him, and Hazarin, after years of never so much as approaching the stables, mounts a stallion once more. He grows strong and healthy, his color improves and the resists the advances of diseases – it does not look as though Elsren will be king anytime soon. And that is as well, for Hazarin is a kindly – if negligent – monarch, repealing many of the conquerors' bloodier laws, riding out in the streets to meet his people (not because he's particularly _interested _in the rabble, but because he likes to ride outside the palace and Rózčia who invariably accompanies him is delighted at this novel experience and what pleases her pleases him).

Rózčiane's heart is tender for she is still a child and after listening to the grievances of the poor, she is not content with disgorging the contents of her little velvet purses and showering the less fortunate with gold like a fairy-tale princess. "You have to do something about it! They're _so_ poor!" she cries, almost in tears, with the brutal frankness of a little girl. She pesters her brother until finally, half-amused, half-irritated, he agrees to sign laws reducing the land revenue and the gratuitous taxes on those of raka blood. Naturally, this doesn't go down so well with the luarin nobility and Rubinyan, with righteous indignation with him, takes him to task with words so sharp that they cut deep into Hazarin's kingly pride.

Too deep.

"Am I the king or am I not the king?" he bellows and physically hurls Rubinyan out of his office. Later Rubinyan comes back to apologize to His Majesty but by then the damage is already done. Hazarin alters the Law of Succession that night – Duke Nomru will be Lord Protector of the Realm in case of his death and Elsren's ascent to the throne, whilst in his minority. But there is still hope left for Imajane – in his anxiety to secure his beloved little sister's future, Hazarin betroths Rózčia to Elsren.

_464 H.E__._

Aly might once have been the daughter of Tortall's Spymaster, but for all her qualifications she is still not even eighteen. Still a bit raw, green at the edges, her self-assurance still not fully untainted by inexperience. She is not the goddess the raka, new themselves to the world of international espionage, fondly – foolishly – believe her to be.

She is all too fallibly human as the events of the March Hares' Revolt, as it is later termed, reveal.

A well-paid (and threatened) informer, a misstep in intricate calculations, mage-binding potions… is it so surprising that the lanes of Dockmarket stink of festering carcasses for the next few weeks? The Trickster, having dallied too long in the Mortal Realms, has no say in the matter as he's summarily carted off by his righteously indignant brother and sister.

Lady Alanna adds her silent vow of vengeance, vengeance for her daughter's sake, to the list of those in the Copper Isles who pray for the victims of the tyrannical arm of the Rittevons. But, she knows, it will probably remain silent forever.

_Loathsome creature – if I were Queen I'd have her sold in the market as a common slave. Thinks she's a noble, does she? I'd show her she's nothing more than the most ragged copper wench that prowls the Honeypot at night in search of customers!_

Imajane is not – and does not hope to be – Queen, but her brother is kind enough to gratify her wishes. Lady Saraiyu, once the beauty of Rajmuat, is paraded, with a host of nubile raka – whole or hybrid – maidens down the streets of Rajmuat, stripped of adornment and clad only in her degradation. Lord Ferdolin, for his audacity in making a plea for her, is confined to Kanodang for a day – for "contempt of royalty". The Balitang girls, according to an ancient statute of the Conquerors' Laws, being possessed of raka blood, are stripped of their properties – Tanair – and sold into slavery, much to Princess Imajane's gratification. Their servants are executed and become a column of carcasses in Dockmarket. Faceless, stinking ruins.

Elsren and Petranne are brought to Court and every effort is begun to wash away the memories. Their governesses and tutors, who all bow to Princess Imajane, flatter themselves and their royal mistress that the children have forgotten the hard fate of their treacherous family members – or have come to accept it as only justice. Rózcia certainly heeds her sister's words and believes that the penalties were justified – but of course Imajane was always careful lest she become _too _familiar, too close with the elder Balitang daughters – but… does Elsren?


	2. New Arrivals in Rajmuat

_469 H.E_

Throughout the city of Rajmuat, the temple gongs had just clanged to mark the second hour after noon, the hottest hour of the day. Down at the harbor the summer sun beat down pitilessly – but picturesquely too, it must be owed – on the stevedores who were loading and unloading the cargo of the ships which bobbed up and down on the glistening green water. Their straw hats, seemingly bent by the heat of the sun, availed little protection. Stripped to the waist, their muscles, strong and hard after years of back-breaking labor, rippled under their dark copper skin, slick under a film of sweat.

It looked to be a slow hour.

A passenger ship from Carthak had arrived about a half-hour before. Its purple sails, slashed with crimson, and with gilt trim about the edges signaled that it was of imperial extraction. The few idlers of the dock, with leisure and energy enough to divert themselves with such thoughts, surmised that it might even be carrying the new Ambassador. He _was _due to arrive within the week and would have the dubious honor of being the thirteenth Ambassador from Carthak in two years – Lady Imajane had seen to it that the ones before him had been sent back home, more or less intact.

Naturally, the Emperor had been rather aggrieved when some of his Ambassadors had started arriving 'less' intact. There'd even been speculation at both Courts that the Iliniats would no longer be sending any more ambassadors to the Rittevons. Good sense had prevailed on both sides however and after Lady Imajane had sent an exquisitely-worded apology – on Lord Rubinyan's behest – to the Court of Carthak, mutual cordiality, if not warmth, had been restored just in time for the latest ambassador to be sent to the new king's coronation.

There was a young woman, leaning on the handrails of the ship and looking down at the harbor with interest. Those down at the harbor, when they caught sight her, began to look at her too with considerable interest. While not clad in the traditional garb of a noblewoman of the Copper Isles – a loose, flowing one-piece gown cinched with a girdle at the hips and a sleeveless version of the classical houppelande – it was plain for even the commoners on the harbor to recognize that she was a lady, bred and born.

Her fine cambric garment of a surprising whiteness was embroidered lavishly with seed pearls and seemed molded to her slender frame. A sheer veil edged with bone lace had been thrown over the glossy masses of her blue-black hair. Her hair flowed loosely down her in back in the modern fashion that had begun in Tortall and gradually spread to all gentlewomen who professed themselves of the 'elite' in civilized countries. Her hands seemed to glitter in the sunshine, loaded as they were with rings – many thick copper rings threading up her slim copper fingers as in the old Carthaki style.

She was beautiful too, holding herself with the poise of a courtier and the grace of a horsewoman. Certainly as lovely – if not more – a creature as the dusky sultanas of the old fables. Only, rather surprisingly, the lady on the ship was copper-skinned, her complexion closer to that of a daughter of the rakas than of Carthak.

_Who is she? _

"M'lady, the master wants you."

The copper sultana turned and languidly blew the people who were watching her from below an airy kiss. Queen to their commoners. Then she glided behind the dark handmaid who'd called her.

_Who is she?_

**000**

It was Lady Imajane's study and not her bedchamber, a fact evinced by the sight of silver salvers, spilling over, not with flowers or trinkets, but with official documents and letters. Facing the intricately-carved black walnut escritoire with lion's feet of solid gold, the duchess herself sat, sipping a fortifying cup of spiced wine. The heat of the afternoon combined with the weariness that the unaccustomed labors of the day had brought to her had caused her to dismiss all of her ladies except the two most trusted – Edunata and Tyanane – and to exchange her ornate day dress for a simple white kirtle. Her gauzy black cotehardie too had been cast off and now lay, folded neatly over the back of an ivory chair.

Her secretary read out a list of announcements from a small scroll, concluding with the reports of the day with the announcement that Lord Cejo, the new Ambassador, had arrived at one.

"How tiresome," Imajane murmured, kicking her black silk slippers, hand-painted with white lilies, impatiently. "I suppose we'll be pressed to throw some gala for him and his puffed-up lady, to show that we're suitably awe-struck by his liege's power? You remember Eda how insulted the Tusaine Ambassador's woman was just because we neglected to receive her with what she thought due ceremony?"

"Lord Cejo has no wife, Your Highness," the secretary murmured.

"We thank the Goddess for small mercies," Imajane said, visibly brightening. "And he is… a young man, is he?"

The secretary nodded assent.

"We shall strive to find him a suitable bride," the duchess said sweetly. "Let it not be said of the Court of Rajmuat that it lacks suitable maidens – what think you of Lady Aquisara, Tyanane? Would it please her to reside in high state in the desert? Lord Cejo, I understand, is of rather good family, even if he is a Carthaki."

"Lady Aquisara is secretly engaged," Tyanane, who kept all the court gossip, told her. "She has not yet seen fit to inform her parents but her fiancé is one of the wild Gefring lads and he would take it ill if you required Lady Aquisara to entice the ambassador. Lady Faizyl would be suitable though."

"And we would not be displeased at all to rid ourselves of our brashest maid of honor," Imajane said. "Your insight never ceases to give us pleasure, Lady Tyanane. Depend on it there shall be a position open for your son – the Cinque Ports I believe, would be suitable?" Quickly she dismissed her secretary and slipped into the gauzy black overrobe that Edunata held out for her. It was just past five – the time she usually visited Rózčia.

The Royal Palace, in high summer, was a veritable bower of beauty. Flocks of officious geese, almost comically innocent of the gory fate that awaited them at the next banquet, pranced around the mint-green grounds like so many fat, white noblemen. Tall striped tulips, the favored flower of the Rittevons, swayed in the salt-spray-scented breeze, the same breeze that made the crystal wind-chimes hanging from the eaves of the royal apartments laugh.

And today, great mirrors had been set up all around the mighty pavilions that the Rittevons 'received' in – flat, oval glass slabs mounted on bamboo beams and copper stands that shimmered in the sunlight. For tonight was the night of the Virgins' Festival.

It was a festival unique to the luarin of the Copper Isles, though it had its roots in the ancient raka traditions in veneration of the Goddess in her avatar as the Maiden. Girls – hopefully virgins – were expected to behave with appropriate chasteness and modesty and correct feminine decorum on that day. They were also to put a mirror outside their houses. At night, the sun-warmed mirrors were brought back in and a mixture of ash and vermilion powder scattered over them. Using one of the treatises issued by the temples of Ganiel the Dreamweaver – vernacularly termed 'dream diaries' – it was held that one could interpret the trade of one's future husband by the shape that the ash-and-vermilion had made on the glass.

Of course the answers the village maids usually came up with seldom came to pass – most likely as the night of the Virgins' Festival was considered the best time to deflower one – but it was all in the spirit of good fun and entertainment. It had even spread to the high-born ladies of the realm who, though they ought to have known better, had been quite infected by the excitement of their maids as the Virgins' Festival approached. Lady Imajane, sagging down to popular demand, had also arranged for a similar show of mirrors – vocally protesting all throughout that it was perfectly degrading for a gentlewoman to get herself mixed up in such business – and bizarre for the scenery was the result thereat.

But naturally everyone was delighted with the concept – the mothers of the young noblewomen earnestly believed that their frolicsome daughters would take the day to reflect on the virtue of chastity (a virtue the girls themselves held in scant regard), the young noblemen knew from experience with their sisters' maids that the best time to deflower a virgin was on Virgins' Festival and hoped to exercise the same principle on the ladies of their station, the young noblewomen themselves all agog for a nighttime picnic and the chance to be deflowered by their paramours…

Perhaps only one person in the entire palace complex was truly unhappy.

Princess Rózčiane.

She looked like the meadow-violets her mother had once loved in her purple mourning robes, and she felt about as perky as a damp squib. Actually, she felt like a damp squib. At the moment she felt she could understand the soul of a damp squib. The heartbreak it was bound to feel when the truth slowly dawned up it that it's life was worthless. That it would never sail to the stars and burst, for a second, into incandescent glory. That it would be condemned to ignominy, to a fate worse than burning up alive (which at least had its own honor).

"I _wish_ I _was_ a _widow_," Rózčia wailed. She was twelve and had chosen to commemorate her most recent birthday by emphasizing at least two words in every sentence she spoke. She felt that it was her right, as the sole crowned princess of the realm – Imajane was only a duchess. At that moment she also felt that it was rather hard lines that the only people near enough to hear her dramatic outburst was Cade, who was the cause of her despair, and Petra, who had not a theatrical bone in her body.

"Mmm," her cousin, Petranne, murmured, not dropping a stitch as she embroidered away on the tapestry she'd been working on since she was ten (and had still, four years later, failed to complete). Thirteen-year-old Lady Cadeyrn, Duke Nomru's only granddaughter, merely flipped another page of her book.

"_And_ I wish," Rózčia continued, turning the battery of her glare upon the two, "That _certain_ gentlewomen, lacking in consideration, would _refrain_ from reminding certain aggrieved princesses that they are betrothed, at importunate intervals. It _distresses_ me."

"I was only telling you something you ought to know by yourself, dear," Cade said absently. "Of course it's silly of you to participate in the Virgins' Festival – _you _already know what your future husband is to be."

"No I do not," Rózčia retorted petulantly, determined to be disagreeable. "It is _quite_ _possible_ that Elsren will accept the Kyprish throne but it is equally _probable_ that he might decide to turn his hand to… farming. Or bookkeeping. He is naturally of a retiring disposition and _I _think bookkeeping would suit him _admirably_. Yes, I rather think he shall choose to tend Baron Engan's capacious library – _I_ consider bookkeeping a _manly_ occupation, so he need not fret about pleasing _me_. Petra, you might tell him so."

"Why don't you go tell my Lord Rubinyan?" Cade asked acidly. She had inherited – or rather had been forced to inherit – her grandfather's distaste of the duke. "I'm sure he'll consider it prudent to slack the expense on Elsren's coronation if he realizes that the future king will soon retire to take up his life's true calling as a bookkeeper. And," she added maliciously, "Lady Imajane might even be able to salvage some money to buy herself a few more rings from the coronation expenses then – she's quite a magpie about jewelry."

"_Cadeyrn_," Petra sighed, finally looking up from her embroidery. "What would Her Highness say if she heard you speak so?"

"Well she won't hear me," Cade said smugly. "Not unless Mistress Rózčia here fibs."

"You consider me _so_ low? No don't bother answering – I won't need to fib," Rózčia said with dignity. She pointed to a howler monkey that had crept up the low white wall that encircled the orchard in which they were sitting. Sunlight glistened off the jewels embedded in its collar. "Listening spells on the collar – _if_ she chose to keep track of _all_ the reports then…"

"But she won't choose," Cade said brightly. "She doesn't have the time."

"Lady Tyanane _would_ have the time," Rózčia said smugly. "_You_ haven't been in Court for too long so of _course_ you don't know much _about_ anything – but you _really_ ought to have learned by now about Lady Tyanane being my sister's official mole."

"I'm not a Rittevon," Cade said lightly. "Treachery, political intrigue isn't in my blood. I suppose I'll be forced to seduce Elsren away from you, darling – a quiet life as a bookkeeper's wife seems to be infinitely preferable, now, to life here in this nest of vipers."

"And I suppose you consider _me_ a viper?" Rózčia didn't know whether to be miffed or laugh at Cade's innocence.

"You would be quite indignant if I did not," Cade replied, standing up. "It's a compliment."

**000**

Lord Cejo Baghdassarian was, as certain disapproving elderly members of the Carthaki Court were fond of saying, a puppy. He dressed with the most fashionable flamboyance, chased all the married women, prided himself on his connoisseurship of female flesh and wine, kept a menagerie and a string of glamorous racehorses and hunting dogs of the finest pedigree, gambled to the ruin of the family fortunes and in short conducted himself like a degenerate rake.

All this was decidedly hard lines on his widowed mother, a scion of Marenite royalty, who had begun to fear that her purse would not be long enough to support her twenty-one year old son for more than a few years. To appease her highly distressed ladyship – or perhaps the lady's uncle, the King of Maren, who took a personal interest in the fortunes of his favorite niece – Emperor Kaddar had arranged a special ambassadorial position for young Lord Cejo.

The cost of living in the Copper Isles was low and there was always a chance that Lady Imajane, in a violent mood, would simply decide to dispatch with the ambassador's head. She was rather fond of doing so. Then the problem would be quite easily solved – there would be no further strain on Lady Baghdassarian's purse, a blemish of the court (Cejo was a blemish and Kaddar really, really didn't like his 'innocent' moonlit strolls with the Empress) would be done away with, there would be no need to send any more ambassadors to the Copper Isles… the Emperor congratulated himself, in his cabinet, on his intelligence.

Lord Cejo didn't mind much himself. A fixed income was always welcome and he was sure that there were just as many pretty women in Rajmuat as there were in Kevorkian, the new capital of Carthak. And even if there weren't, he had Reya didn't he?

The journey from Dockmarket to Swan District where the 'ambassadorial suites', as the palaces reserved for foreign envoys were called, were located had taxed nobody's strength. Still in her cool, comfortable traveling garments, Reya – or The Baghdassarian Doll as she was known in the higher echelons of Carthaki society – busied herself with the arrangements for the clothes, the furniture, the linen, the quarters for the few servants they'd brought from Carthak, the new servants of the Copper Isles that the Royal Family had supplied. Lady Baghdassarian herself could not have been more assiduous.

It was late when Reya finally entered her own quarters and signaled for her handmaids to attend her. "Quite a place isn't it, M'lady?" Kohar asked thoughtfully. "Even in the master's suite they use oil lamps – us poor down at Kevorkian use those, aye, but what of the nobles? _They _all have everything lit with Magefire."

"King Oron had Magefire banned in his day," Reya murmured, as Kohar untangled the knots in her hair. "He was a very odd man, you know… in one of his nightmares, or so I've heard, he feared that Magefire would kill him and so… I'm surprised King Hazarin never had anything done about the law though."

"You know quite a lot about King Oron's policies don't you?"

Reya tilted her head and smiled playfully at the tall young man who leaned in the curving archway. "I know a lot about everything," she said sweetly. "That arch for instance – it's an ogee arch. Quite pretty, isn't it? A common design in the Isles, brought by the luarin conquerors centuries ago, but you won't find too many arches of that sort in Carthak. Unless in a very fashionable, very modern palace in Kevorkian, of course."

He chuckled and strode into the room, throwing himself on a heap of cushions that she'd arranged on the window-seat. He looked tired, though she, for one, could not imagine why. Lord Cejo never did any work if he could help it. "I _walked_ down to the Flowermarket, goddess," he explained, "It's…"

"A round dozen miles from here and home to some of the prettiest, poorest girls in the city," Reya said, feeling a little insulted that he'd gone down to the Flowermarket on his very first day. Really, was she _that _bad a wife to him? Well, she wasn't any wife to him at all but sometimes she felt like one, tending to his household in the way his wife one day would. But of course sometimes, when he'd squandered too much money and had for his pains gotten a fine scolding from his mother, she felt like his big sister.

He sensed the petulance in his tone because he quickly added, "I thought you might be tired tonight after doing so much… I didn't want to disturb you."

"What a foolish boy you are," Reya sighed, dismissing Kohar with a flick of her fingers. "Why walk down to the Flowermarket when you could simply order the horses?"

He looked horrified. "I know you're a clever woman, Reya but _really_. The Rittevons were kind enough to send down the draught horses to carry us and our baggage down here, but they left as soon as we were settled didn't they? The only horses in the stables are my racers – can you imagine me riding Brangwane down the common streets? Or Vosgi? My goddesses, my jewels, do you honestly expect me to ever expose them to those filthy roads, to tether them to some common post among the very dregs of society? _Really_." He shook his head, looking positively appalled.

"I repent me of my calumny," Reya said solemnly. "That's what my co-… I mean, my mother made me say whenever I'd done something bad." She stroked Cejo's head gently and let him lean into her hold. "I was born here you know – you guessed I was half-raka."

"I suppose it was the Flowermarket?" Cejo asked absently. "A poor, pretty little girl like you?"

"It might have been," Reya said edgily. "Perhaps it almost was. Things haven't changed much."

"How do you know that?"

"The same people, the same palaces, the same poverty," Reya said with an ugly laugh. "Lady Imajane Jimajen as much a queen as ever. A child as king, even if he hasn't been coroneted yet. Yes, nothing will ever change here."

"Cheerful as ever, aren't we? Mouthing doomsday with the most charming dimples. If I wasn't perfectly exhausted I'd kiss you."

"And I'd only laugh if you did instead of slapping you," Reya chuckled. "Only I've changed with the times, it seems."

**A/N: Some clarification about the ages...**

**Rocziane is twelve, Elsren and Cadeyrn thirteen, Petranne fourteen, Imajane in her mid-thirties, Rubinyan early sixties.**


End file.
